Harold R. Johnson

Harold R. Johnson (c. 1957– February 9, 2022) was a Canadian indigenous lawyer and writer, whose book Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People (And Yours) was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 2016 Governor General's Awards.[1] The book, an examination of the problem with alcohol consumption among Canadian First Nations, draws on Johnson's work as a Crown prosecutor in northern Saskatchewan.[2]

Harold R. Johnson
Born1957/08/30
Molanosa, Saskatchewan, Canada
Died9 February 2022(2022-02-09) (aged 64)
Toronto, Ontario
OccupationLawyer, writer
NationalityCanadian
Notable worksFirewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People (And Yours)
Notable awardsGovernor General's Award for English-language non-fiction

Johnson told CBC Radio interviewer Shelagh Rogers in 2016 that his father was a Swedish immigrant and his mother a Cree woman in Saskatchewan, where he was born. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy and worked as a logger, trapper and miner before going to university as an adult, completing his education in law with an MA at Harvard.[3] He was a member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation.[4]

After being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, Johnson died on February 9, 2022, at the age of 64.[4] His twelfth and final book, The Power of Story was released posthumously in October of the same year.

Bibliography

Fiction

  • Billy Tinker (2001)
  • Back Track (2005)
  • Charlie Muskrat (2008)
  • The Cast Stone (2011)
  • Corvus (2015)
  • The Björkan Sagas (2021)

Nonfiction

  • Two Families: Treaties and Government (2007)
  • Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours) (2016)
  • Clifford (2018)
  • Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada (2019)
  • Cry Wolf: (2020)[5]
  • The Power of Story: On Truth, the Trickster, and New Fictions for a New Era

References
  1. "Two Sask. authors up for Governor General's awards". Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, October 5, 2016.
  2. "Indigenous people need to tell their stories of sobriety, says lawyer". The Current, September 27, 2016.
  3. "Harold R. Johnson on changing the narrative around alcohol in Indigenous communities". CBC Radio. 2017-01-30. Retrieved 2020-04-09. Harold R. Johnson is a Harvard-educated lawyer and crown prosecutor who works in Northern Saskatchewan in Treaty 6 territory. He's also a fiction writer, a trapper and a member of the Montreal Lake Cree nation.
  4. "Celebrated Cree author Harold R. Johnson dead at 68". CBC Books. February 10, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  5. "The CBC Books spring reading list: 40 great books to read this season". CBC Books. 2020-04-09. Retrieved 2020-04-09. Johnson takes on wolves and the mythology around them in Cry Wolf. He explores Carnegie's death and other wolf attacks and suggests that we should take wolves more seriously.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.